It often is said that once you get bit by the gearhead bug, you are afflicted for life. So it seems for the owner of this week's rides. Regular reader Don Waggonner is 73 and has been into "anything with a motor since the '50s," he said.

The first car to capture his heart was a 1948 Ford, and his love continued "through the muscle car years," and soon expanded into a love of motorcycles.

By the 1960s he had gotten into stock cars, and Waggonner even built several for the old Meyer Speedway track in Houston.

His favorite era of rides, however, happens to be those that were made in the decades before he was born. "I really relate to the vehicles of the '20s and '30s," he said.

Two of his current rides are his rat rod truck and his bobber.

His rat truck is a project he has been working with off and on for the past four years.

He spotted the pickup while searching online.

"I found the little truck on eBay and went to Cut Off, La., to get it." While he liked what he saw when he got there, he knew there was lots of work that needed to be done.

"It was a mess but the body was in pretty good shape, except for the floor and bottom quarter of the cab and doors," Waggonner said. He brought the truck back to Houston and got busy, doing the majority of the work himself.

When he couldn't keep the pace himself, however, he remained determined to keep the build on track.

At one point, when he was too busy with his full time job, he outsourced some of the heavy lifting.

"I wasn't getting it done fast enough to suit me," he said, so he had BK Automotive put a Mustang II front suspension in the rat rod, as well as rack and pinion steering with tilt steering.

Waggonner also put in new glass and electric windows into the truck and fully upholstered the interior. He gave it a 350 small-block roller motor, a 350 automatic transmission with a Hearst track shifter, and a 4-link rear with a track bar on air bags. "The truck is totally dynomated, making it very quiet," he said.

His bobber was built by Stevenson's Cycles, in Wayne, Mich., for a customer in Worton.